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I call this time of the year 'the season of left-overs'. Over the last week I have watched pounds of left-over food being crammed into plastic containers and zip-lock bags. I have seen guests assaulted by generous hosts pleading them to take home outsize portions of stuffing, roast vegetables, wilting salad and squashed dessert. I'm sure that much of the hesitantly accepted bounty ends up in the back of over-stuffed refrigerators, eventually going moldy and starting to smell really bad.
No, this is not a diatribe against our culture's propensity for self indulgence. Instead, it is the source of a helpful metaphor.
How it feels to be you in the present moment is largely based on the agglomerating left-overs of your life's experiences. Traces of experience that have not been fully processed and integrated linger in actual physical form and at a cellular level in our body and nervous system. Modern advances in neuroscience and technology have made it possible to map how experiences continue to modify the physical make up of the brain well into our mature years.
As they affect the growth, function and connection of neurons in the brain, unprocessed negative or traumatic experiences become stored 'left-overs' that radically determine how we respond to all kind of situations in our current life.
If "how it feels to be you" in your current life is mostly anxious, regularly depressed, seriously addicted, or constantly stressed, you could benefit from checking for 'left overs'.
The good news that has emerged in the last ten or so years is that it is quite possible to 'change our brain'. What this means is that it is entirely possible to clean out the left-overs of undigested prior experience.
The Opening the Heart Workshop™ approach has long recognized the lingering power of the moldy leftovers of past negative experience. It is also our experience that these leftovers can be uncovered and discarded with appropriate therapeutic interventions and infusions of loving kindness. These actions can literally re-wire the brain so that new experiences do not automatically trigger ingrained reactions to past events and circumstances.
As you deal with food left-overs this holiday season take a moment to check for the sometimes not so obvious "left-overs" lurking at the back of your "inner refrigerator".